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“Bro, you’re making it too big.”
Jason looked up from his work to shoot Percy a glare. The other demigod had stretched both his arms across the table opposite him and was resting his head on his shoulder with a tilt.
He hadn’t expected Percy to stay after Jason had asked him of his favour yet instead of leaving the arts and crafts room, Percy had plonked himself opposite him and plucked up some spare clay. Next to one of Percy's hands was now the half-completed version of what appeared to be the shape of a dog.
“Who put you in charge?” Jason challenged.
“You don’t want Nico having odd looking beads, do you? He won’t like it if they stand out against his other one and someone points it out.”
Jason sighed. Percy had a point. Nico was still getting used to settling back into living at Camp Half-Blood long-term and Jason didn’t want to muck this up. This was meant to be an encouragement to stay not a reason to put Nico off.
He hovered his wet clay against the string of Percy’s beads that laid on the table in front of him.
“Fine, I’ll let you have this one.”
Percy grinned and Jason removed some of the clay from the current ball.
“How many did you say I needed to make again?” Jason queried.
Percy lifted his head then reached across the rest of the table. He drifted a finger over his green Battle of the Labyrinth and light blue Battle of Manhattan beads. “Only these two. We didn’t find Nico until after Thalia got de-treed."
Jason plucked another small clump of clay as Percy retreated back into his own space. He’d always been curious on Percy and Nico’s relationship, even more so now considering his own relationship with the Son of Hades. He'd just never found the chance to ask after Gaea had been defeated - himself too upset about Leo and Percy strangely absent around camp.
Maybe this was the Fates way of saying now was that opportunity. The fact they were both at Camp Half-Blood on the same chilly weekend in early October hadn’t been planned after all.
Jason opened his mouth to speak but Percy beat him to it. “He should have had one for the Battle of Manhattan though.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was here, living at camp when they got handed out. I remember Travis passing him one along with a cord.” Percy frowned. “He must have lost it.”
A curl of something rotten twisted around Jason’s gut. Nico had told him there was no reason to worry yet the way the two of them spoke about each other… Jason couldn’t prevent the way he wished he'd been the one in Percy's shoes. How he yearned to have met Nico years earlier and saved them both from so much unnecessary pain.
He exhaled out of his nose and pushed his glasses up by their bridge. He trusted Nico. He had no reason to acknowledge the feeling in his gut.
“When did you meet Nico?” he asked, curiosity winning.
Percy let out a little sigh. “December, just before the winter solstice. Grover called us – that’s Annabeth, Thalia and I – out as Nico and his sister were being stalked by a monster.” Percy’s tone lightened as he spoke the next sentence, “You should have seen him Jason. He thought everything was so cool and kept spewing out Mythomagic facts.”
Jason peered over at Percy.
Something had been off about him since the end of Gaea. He had plenty of reasons to be acting strange, they all did but Percy especially. He'd been worried initially, those words Percy had spoken underwater after their meeting with Kymopoleia ringing through his mind but Annabeth had been there so Jason hadn't stepped in.
Then, only a few weeks after they'd left camp, the news of Percy and Annabeth's break-up had spread like wildfire.
He hadn't asked for the details, it wasn't his place, but whenever he'd spoken to Percy over an IM since that dull expression had never left his eyes.
Until now. Just now, when talking about Nico, Percy hadn’t looked nor sounded so weighed down by those burdens that haunted him.
Percy laughed to himself. “I found him so annoying at the time.”
What was so amusing about finding Nico annoying, Jason did not know and he held back his tongue as to not call Percy out on it. He doubted Percy meant it with malice intent.
“Hey, don’t give me that look,” Percy protested and Jason dropped his face into a neutral position. He hadn’t meant to have made his thoughts so obvious. “Annabeth was missing and I had an small kid excitedly asking if I could surf in front of me, even you’d get annoyed by that.”
Jason sniggered. “Can you surf though?”
Percy shot him a glare from across the table and Jason’s eyes closed as he laughed harder.
It was hard to correlate the Nico he knew to the one Percy spoke of. He'd begun to piece together enough of Nico's past to realise why he'd grown into the person he was now although sometimes Jason wished he could go back in time.
He'd probably fall in love all over again.
His heart beat a little faster in his chest. He still wasn’t used to the fact he was dating Nico di Angelo. It felt like yesterday he’d kissed him in Cabin One after he’d lost so terribly at that video game. Nico had flushed like a tomato and broke into stutters that had made Jason’s chest swell. He wasn’t one for impulse decisions but that had been the one of the few times letting his body take over had paid off.
He rolled the clay between his fingers, hovering it over Percy’s beads once again to check the size.
“Dude, is this better?”
Percy leant across the table again, his sea breeze scent coming with him. “Perfect.”
He busied himself with perfecting the other bead, matching it up to the one Percy had praised.
Jason pouted when he concentrated.
It was kind of cute if Percy was being honest.
The small beads looked slightly comical in Jason’s large hands as he prodded the holes through the middle of them with a long, thin tool.
Honestly, Percy hadn’t expected to see Jason on his random weekend drop-in to Camp Half-Blood. Last time he'd contacted Jason he'd been hiding in his dorm buildings toilets at school so no one would see the IM call between them.
He'd looked funny with his over six foot tall, built frame cramped into a tiny stall and Percy had teased him for it at the time.
Jason approaching him to ask which beads he’d need to make and to borrow his own beads as reference so he could make Nico di Angelo his own was something he'd expected considerably less though.
He knew Jason and Nico were friends, Nico didn’t let just anyone hug him or Percy would have months ago and he’d seen Jason get away with it countless times, but he hadn’t entertained the idea they had become this close.
He still remembered Jason’s hesitation to save Nico from the jar back on the Argo II. Not like Percy could talk, the annoyance against Nico lying to his confused, amnesiac face had clouded his mind and produced hostile words he hadn’t meant as well.
Jason sighed, placing his tool down onto the bench and twisting his own bead of half orange and half purple with the words SPQR where it rested against his chest.
“Are you sure he’ll like this?” Jason asked.
“What am I? The Nico di Angelo expert?” Percy teased.
It tugged at his chest – the way Jason was acting.
Sure, they’d been put together during a war but comparing the leader of Rome Percy had first met to the guy in front of him asking for reassurance that Nico would like a gift was almost impossible. He only believed Jason could be this soft because it was happening right in front of him.
Jason’s eyebrows furrowed behind his glasses. The sun that shone through the windows reflected off the glass and prevented Percy from seeing those sky blue eyes but from the way Jason’s teeth teased the small scar on his lip, he was clearly troubled.
Percy sighed. He’d wanted to be this person towards Nico for years.
Their strings hadn’t been woven in such a way for it to happen though.
At least Nico had Jason now. Yeah, at least there was Jason (even if he wished it was him in Jason’s place instead).
He’d even debated asking the head counsellors on duty this summer to make Nico the other beads but he hadn’t been sure if the act would have been appreciated. Ever since Nico’s, well, confession and the aftermath on Percy’s end things, he hadn't quite worked out how to act around the other demigod.
How does he act around the same guy who had triggered his own crisis that had resulted in plenty of tears, one exploded plumbing pipe and the end of his relationship with his now ex-girlfriend?
Not that he blamed Nico. As in Annabeth’s words, it had been a long time coming.
Jason was still looking at him, eyes now visible to show their uncertainty.
“I’m sure he’ll like them, dude,” Percy reassured. “I’ve been trying to tell him to stay at camp for years so you’re doing better than me already.”
It stung a little how easily Nico had warmed up to Jason. Somehow, even though Percy had been the one to make sure Nico had a home, it had been Jason who had ensured he'd remain there.
Jason’s cheeks flushed with pink and Percy cocked his head up.
Was Jason embarrassed? That wasn’t a sight Percy had ever seen before but it pulled his mouth into a smile, the previous negative feelings vanishing to the background.
“Thanks bro,” Jason replied, head down and tool back in his hand.
A fuzzy feeling wrapped around his rib cage and Percy, not knowing what to do with said feeling, nudged Jason under the table with his foot.
“Keep your feet to yourself or I’m kicking you out,” Jason threatened with a glare over the top of his glasses.
He stuck his tongue out at him in response but his feet remained on his side of the table and he picked up his little clay Mrs. O'Leary. After all, Percy quite liked Jason’s company.
Percy was chatting into Jason's ears about Nico again.
Sure, he was borrowing Percy's beads for reference but why he'd chosen yet again to sit with him the next day Jason had no idea. Usually, he escaped to the arts and crafts room for the silence. Before the summer had broken, he’d been found by Nico on multiple occasions hiding from the noise of main camp. That had been fine, Nico had been avoiding it with him. Today though, the noise had followed him in.
He dipped his thin paintbrush in the brown paint and held the green bead to his face.
"My mom asked about Nico the other week."
Jason's brush froze before it touched the bead and he looked over it at Percy. "Your mom knows Nico?"
Percy looked up from his own painting session, the dog from yesterday being covered completely black, and shrugged his shoulders casually. "Oh yeah, they've met a few times. He even visited when I was in that Hera induced sleep coma. She apparently forced him to eat dinner and sleep over the night because he looked, her quote, dead on his feet."
That same feeling from yesterday curled back into his gut. It had been growing since then in the background but Percy had brought it back full-force.
He'd done the same last night at the campfire too when he'd offered Nico a roasted marshmallow with a soft smile and Nico had taken it with a small thanks. It had grown even more when, as Nico explained how Frank had sent him a brand new set of Mythomagic cards, he'd caught Percy's expression behind Nico. Percy's eyes had softened, his eyebrows relaxed all with a small smile to complete the look.
All that Roman training had paid off in Jason's own self-control to not ask what Percy wanted with Nico. To ask why, out of the few months it had been since Gaea, had Percy looked the happiest when gazing at the back of Jason's boyfriends head.
Percy let out a huff of amusement. "You should have seen Paul's suspicious look when on my birthday a couple years ago me and my mom had to try and explain how yet another person hadn't used our front door." Percy sighed, yet it was a peaceful one. "The first was my dad leaving by the way. The second being Nico scaring me half to death by shadow travelling onto my fire escape."
Jason gritted his teeth and tore his focus to the bead in front of him. He had to leave camp again in a few hours to make it back for school, he needed to get these beads finished.
He tuned Percy and the negative feelings brewing inside his body out with fantasies of how Nico would react to his little gift. Would he have that cute little wide eyed and mouth expression? Maybe a blush to go with it? Would Jason feel Nico’s arms around his middle? Would he get to spend the last moments at camp this weekend inside one of their cabins chasing his boyfriend’s kisses?
He peered over to where Percy’s beads lay on the table, still threaded onto their leather cord and copied the labyrinth maze image onto the bead in his hand.
His mind quietened as he painted, his focus being purely on his work. Thankfully Percy had decided to also focus himself, his dark eyebrows pulled together as he did so and silence had finally fallen between them.
By the time Jason had finished the final details on Nico’s last bead, Percy had completed his own painting that had turned out to be a hellhound complete with the little red dots for eyes, wandered outside to speak to another camper and returned to plonk himself onto the edge of Jason’s table.
Just as he was about to tell him to move as he was blocking the good light, the door sprung open flooding in a fresh beam of sun.
“Jason! You in here?” Nico’s voice called.
Both him and Percy must have had the same idea as they both equally scrambled to cover the drying beads.
When he came into view, he froze in place and his eyes went wide. “Percy.”
“Hey Nico, don’t mind us," the shake in Percy's grin showing through into his voice.
Nico’s eyes narrowed. “What are you two planning?”
“Nothing!” Jason exclaimed.
Nico stepped closer and Percy shuffled nearer to him, causing their shoulders to meet. A small electrical current buzzed where they met but if Percy was bothered by Jason's involuntary static shock he didn't say.
“You don’t trust us?”
Nico’s eyes flickered over Percy’s form. Venom curled back into Jason's stomach and he craved nothing more than to pull Nico back into his own attention.
“I trust Jason," Nico said and Jason smirked. "You? Less so.”
The venom spread at Percy and Nico’s casual bickering.
Nico bickers with everyone, he tried to logic with himself.
Logic didn’t work on feelings, no matter how much the opposite had been drilled into his head as a child.
What he was to do with said feelings though, Jason had no idea. They hadn’t taught him that one at Camp Jupiter.
Nico’s attention finally landed on him. Those cool brown eyes were pleading, attempting to use the weakness Nico knew he had over him to get what he wanted. Of course, like every other time, he won.
“Percy, you’re on washing up duty.”
“Dude,” Percy complained, drawing out the sound.
Jason felt no remorse as Percy grumbled something about abuse of demigod powers as he collected both of their dirty painting supplies behind him. He definitely felt none as Nico snorted in amusement.
As Percy’s back turned and the sound of water filling the sink filtered into the room, he caught Nico’s eyes again. Nico raised his dark brows and Jason stepped sideways, signalling silently for him to look at the table.
“Is that a tiny Mrs. O’Leary?”
“Oh, yeah!” Percy called from the sink. “You think it looks like her?”
Nico rested his hands on his thighs as he bent to look at the little clay dog closer. “She’s actually pretty accurate, I’m impressed.”
Jason was surprised the growl of annoyance remained inside his throat. He breathed through his nose and exhaled it out his mouth.
“Nico, I made you a gift,” he said, keeping his voice steady.
Nico turned, eyes wide and shining. “Really?”
He shouldn’t have got so much satisfaction about how easily it had been for him to steal Nico’s full attention as if he was the only one in the room but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel it.
Nico’s eyes shot to the table and his head moved around in quick, small movements before it settled still on Jason’s creation. The only sound was Percy’s washing up as Jason gingerly waited the seconds that felt like minutes for Nico’s reaction.
Oh gods, what if he hated the idea? They’d only been dating a few weeks. What if he’d messed up this early?
He need to have not worried because Nico tilted his head, pushed himself onto his tiptoes and tugged on the front of Jason's shirt.
Jason knew what he wanted.
The kiss was only a quick, sweet peck that only gave Nico the chance to respond for a short moment. When he pulled away, Nico gave him one of those rare soft smiles that made Jason’s heart leap in his chest.
“Thank you, Sparks,” he whispered.
Jason snaked a hand around to in between Nico’s shoulder blades and used it to pull him back into another kiss. How lucky he was that Nico had fallen for him after everything he’d been through.
The now clean cup clattered as it contacted the floor but the sound was distant as if he hadn’t been blessed with underwater hearing.
Percy had turned to ask if Jason wanted any of the paint shades he’d mixed up saving yet the sight he’d been faced with…
His chest tugged, expanded and then sunk.
Oh.
Not now. Not them. Anyone but them.
It was as if Gaea had sucked him back into her earth, suffocating him that bog yet this time there was no escape from the way the air left his lungs and he struggled to find his next gulp of air.
Was this the Fates version of a cruel joke?
Was this Aphrodite’s way of yet again ‘making his love life interesting’ or whatever she’d said back in that car the winter he’d met Nico?
His head swam, his eyes refused to focus and it was as if he might faint with the way his legs no longer felt connected to his own body.
Someone was talking. He couldn’t work out the words, his ears stuffed with cotton, but it lacked the tilt of a European accent that Nico carried. Must be Jason then.
He needed to breathe.
He needed to acknowledge them.
His eyes managed to refocus but the sight felt like a stab to the chest. Jason’s eyes were hard, glaring at him as if he were a threat to his pack. Nico was using him as a shield, half hid behind his frame with his eyes wide and full of what Percy could only describe as fear.
The panic of ruining what he at least managed to have with the two boys in front of him got his voice moving.
“You shocked me that’s all. I wasn’t expecting it. Look-” Percy tugged up the sleeve of his deep blue hoodie, holding his wrist adorned in a pink, purple and blue bracelet out to them both- “I don’t care you’re both kissing each other.”
He did. Just not for the reason that they both most likely believed.
Nico blinked at him before the expression fell from his face and his shoulders sunk. “I thought you knew.”
Jason’s stance relaxed and he turned, taking Nico’s thin shoulders in his large hands.
“Darling,” Jason said, the pet name making Percy want to turn around and throw up in the sink, “I didn’t tell him because I wasn’t sure if you wanted him to know.”
Jason’s tone was so gentle and Percy wasn’t sure if he wanted to be Jason or Nico. What he’d do to be able to talk to Nico in such a gentle caring tone or be subjected to that same tone from Jason. He sighed. If he’d only realised earlier things could have possibly been so different.
No, he wouldn’t fall down that train of thought.
He bent down to pick up the cup he’d dropped as an excuse not to look at the soft gazes that Jason and Nico passed between each other. They were whispering but Percy paid them no mind.
Jason might have approached him and wanted his help with Nico’s gift but his place was clear. He had none.
The cup landed on the draining board with a louder force than necessary.
The sink’s plumbing was nudging at his mind, vibrating slightly under his skin, and he forced the ichor in his blood to calm. This moment was not turning into the latest camp gossip that Percy Jackson had exploded the plumbing as if he were twelve again.
He should have seen this coming. The way Jason had cared to go out his way to make the beads for Nico, how their eyes had appeared to sparkle when they'd been around each other, how he'd caught their smiles when they thought no one was looking, how close they'd sat at the campfire last night, the way Jason spoke about Nico... the list could go on and that was only one weekend.
How had he been so stupid?
It was his fault. Jason and Nico didn’t deserve his anger when it was directed at only himself.
He turned, pushed the nausea down and steadied his fists by his side.
“Congrats,” he said, smile hurting his cheeks from how much it tugged to not be there. “I should have seen this coming.”